Update on Mysterious Oil Leak Into Boston Harbor & Mystic River

According to sources, this may be the source of the mysterious oil leak that’s seeping into the Boston Harbor and Mystic River along Somerville for the past two weeks.

Inspectors have traced the leak to an Eversource underground manhole that may be causing to oil leak.

The manhole is located under the Route 93 overpass bridge off Broadway next to Middlesex Avenue in Somerville.

The leak has been causing a major concern of long term environmental permanent damage to the environment from environmentalists who have be working to solve this problem.

The type of oil seeping into the waters is called Askarel” oil. The oil used in transformers to ignite a process function in a transformer.

Askarel is also known to contain harmful PCBs in its mixture.

The way this Envrmentle harmful Transformer oil or insulating oil is an oil that is stable at high temperatures and has excellent electrical insulating properties. It is used in oil-filled transformers, some types of high-voltage capacitors, fluorescent lamp ballasts, and some types of high-voltage switches and circuit breakers. Its functions are to insulate, suppress corona discharge and arcing, and to serve as a coolant.

Transformer oil is most often based on mineral oil, but alternative formulations with better engineering or environmental properties are growing in popularity.

Damage to the Environment from PCBs in Askarel oil:

A polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) is an organic chlorine compound with the formula C12H10−xClx. Polychlorinated biphenyls were once widely deployed as dielectric and coolant fluids in electrical apparatus, carbonless copy paper and in heat transfer fluids.[2] Because of their longevity, PCBs are still widely in use, even though their manufacture has declined drastically since the 1960s, when a host of problems were identified.[3] Because of PCBs’ environmental toxicity and classification as a persistent organic pollutant, PCB production was banned by United States federal law in 1978 and by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001.[4] The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), rendered PCBs as definite carcinogens in humans. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PCBs cause cancer in animals and are probable human carcinogens.[5] Many rivers and buildings including schools, parks, and other sites are contaminated with PCBs, and there have been contaminations of food supplies with the substances.

This brings us back to the beginning question “Who will be responsible for this environmental disaster in Somerville?”